


terror in a dream, marked by blood

by Skullszeyes



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Boys Kissing, Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreams and Nightmares, Drug Abuse, Drug Dealing, Drug Use, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gavin Reed Backstory, Hurt Gavin Reed, I'm Bad At Titles, Kissing, M/M, Male Slash, Minor Character Death, Not Beta Read, Overdosing, POV Male Character, Past Abuse, Past Violence, Romance, Soft Upgraded Connor | RK900, Swearing, Teenager Gavin Reed, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skullszeyes/pseuds/Skullszeyes
Summary: Gavin deals with the consequence of his actions, and what it led to in the end.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 1
Kudos: 69





	terror in a dream, marked by blood

Gavin was given the small bag while he exchanged the money he got from the last person who bought the stuff from him. His friends seemed excited by the cash, adding it to the rest on the table.

“Same client?” the man asked, the only one standing inside the room. Gavin thinks his name is Darian, but he can hardly recall all that much.

Gavin sat down on the couch that has a dark stain on the arm wrist, and a few rips here and there. He was pretty sure one of these guys picked it up in the alley. “A few of them, yeah.”

He watched his clients with their shaky fingers, heavy breathing, and glazed eyes pass the money over to him while he gave them the Red Ice. He never really liked looking any of them in the eyes when he did this. Then he’d walk off, ending up in this shit hole of a house with four other people inside of it.

Darian had a brother named Mason who was currently snorting coke on the glass table, stained by knocked over drinks and cigarette ash. The other two were high off the same Red Ice that Gavin sells. They were also dealers, but he guessed today they wanted to stay in. It was cold out, a lot to the point that Gavin had been shaking on his way back.

The money was meant to pay the bills, and whatever food they could scrounge up. It wasn’t much, and if anything, Gavin didn’t have anywhere else to go. He met these guys after he dropped out of high school and found himself befriending them. He wouldn’t consider it a friendship in any way, but it would have to be enough.

“This isn’t the usual,” Darian said, standing on the other side of the glass table, his brother had sat back against the couch, a cigarette between his fingers, while he had his eyes closed.

“It’s winter and most of these people won’t answer their doors,” Gavin said, rubbing his eyes. He was tired, way too fucking tired. He did not want Darian to bully him to go back out to grab the rest of the money.

Darian dropped the cash on the table. “You know what, some of them might even be fucking scared about what happened to…”

Gavin looked up, he heard the name, but it wasn't registering, “When did that happen?”

“Two nights ago,” Darian said, picking up a red lighter from the table and sparking up a cigarette.

Gavin always smelled of cigarettes because of these guys, but lately he hadn’t really been cleaning any of his clothes. Maybe he should do that this weekend.

“And? How many?” 

“Five,” Darian shrugged. “Three were minors.”

“Are they dead?” 

“Who the fuck knows, I don’t look into this shit, Gavin.”

Darian’s brother was doing something, and Gavin had a hard time noticing what it was until he was standing up and pacing around the room. Darian didn’t seem to care while he went on about the people who overdosed on the stuff Gavin sold.

Then he looked at the two sitting on the couch. One of them looked fucked up, his eyes were glazed over. While the other had his head back, mouth tilted open, and was obviously not awake.

“Don’t fucking do that,” Darian said, slapping his brother hard in the side of the head, and Gavin watched as he stumbled and hit the ground. The pipe he was holding smashed on the ground and he was reaching out for it, fingers shaking while he clutched the broken pieces until blood leaked out from his palm.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Gavin asked, getting up from the couch. He turned back to the two dealers. There was something he was supposed to know about them, but he couldn’t remember what it was. His heart was racing, and there was a strong sense of a fight-or-flight motion in him, as if his intuition was demanding him to run.

“He’s dead,” Gavin said, staring at the one sitting on the couch, head lolled to the side.

_Holy shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

“What the fuck?” the one sitting beside him said, getting up from the couch while dropping his cigarette on the floor. For some reason he couldn’t see their faces, they were blurred out except Darian and Mason’s.

Darian swore under his breath, then he started ordering Mason to grab their shit, and for the one standing beside Gavin to pile up the money. 

“Grab a bag, Gavin,” Darian said.

He was shaking his head, hands trembling, breathing coming out heavy. “I can’t...I can’t fucking do this anymore. Not for you or the fucking money!”

“If you leave, Gavin, I’ll make sure you end up looking over your fucking shoulder for the rest of your life,” Darian said, his glare deepened. He always looked so damn sickly. Thin and weak, but quick and relentless. A lot of people were scared of Darian for how feral he can become.

Gavin had run on fear when he met them, fear that he was going to walk around in the cold until he froze, and that no one cared about him. He was afraid of that the most. He wanted to matter even if it was small and that he had to buy this kind of comfort with these so called friends.

“I can’t.” It was so damn hard to breathe in this place. “Deal with this shit yourself, Darian.” Then he was walking toward the back, pushing open the door, descending the stairs. Snow was already falling around him as he shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling the plastic under his fingers.

He had nowhere to go and it was so damn cold out.

_“Gavin!”_

He turned around, and Darian slammed him in the face with his fist, he fell hard onto the ground, grunting from the impact, he tried moving away while Mason, started kicking him in the side. The other one was too glazed out on Red Ice like his friend who was dead inside the apartment.

Darian was on top of him, punching him in the face. He was seeing spots in his vision as he groaned from the pain that flushed all over him.

“Did you actually think you were going to fuck off just like that, Gavin!” Another punch. “I took you in, I helped you, and this is the fucking thanks I get!” His vision was disoriented as he was punched harder, struggling to get up if it wasn’t for Mason, who was kicking him in the side.

_Gavin. Wake up._

He momentarily opened his eyes, and all he could see was a dark ceiling, gasping for air as if there were hands around his neck, but he squeezed his eyes shut, and he’s alone on the cold ground. Fingers curling upon the ice and snow. He’s breathing raggedly, pain wracking his entire body. When he finally knows he’s alone, Gavin pushed himself up, clenched teeth but still groaning from the back of his throat.

“Fuck, get up…” he says to himself. He touched his face and looked down at his fingertips to find blood staining them. “Fucking bitch.” 

Gavin struggled to stand, and when he did, he slowly walked as much as he could down the alley. He found a small plastic bag in his pocket. Red Ice. He dropped it on the ground.

After everything he had done, why should anyone care about him? He didn’t matter to Darian or any of them? He was on a loose thread all the time when he didn’t come back with the right amount of cash. When he didn’t make Darian happy. It was only a matter of time this was going to happen.

Gavin was still shaking, trembling, from all that shit he had seen and went through, and now he was walking by himself, bleeding, bruised, and angry. Maybe he did deserve this. The thought cut a hole inside of his chest. Would he even survive at all? Would it even matter?

_“Gavin…wake up.”_

His eyes opened wide, he was struggling, gasping at who was holding onto his wrists. 

“It’s okay, Gavin, it’s okay, you’re safe...you’re safe…” He was familiar, much more than the ones he had lived with. It was dark inside the room, and his fingers softened around Gavin’s wrists. “You’re safe, it was just a dream.”

A dream. No, it was a memory made into a dream. A fucking reoccuring dream that plagues him every night.

Nines loosened his grip on his wrists as Gavin pushed himself into a sitting position. He was still out of breath, heart racing inside his chest. There was flashes in his head from when Darian was dropping the money on the table, to punching him in the face.

“Gavin…” Nines said softly.

He was nodding, rubbing his forehead and then to his eyes. Fuck. He was still trembling. Still thinking about all those years ago when he was following around a bunch of drugged out bastards for a bit of cash.

“I know, I know…” Gavin said, trying to steady out his breathing. It was always the moment when he walks into the house, when he sits down, when one of them dies on the couch, and he’s out in the snow with blood on his fingertips. It’s always the same fucking process.

Nines moves closer, reaching out his hand to gently touch the side of Gavin’s face. “You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re not in that house anymore, you’re not in the snow.”

_You’re not dead._

Gavin leaned into Nines’ touch, it’s so damn comforting to him than Darian’s fucking fists making a mess of his face.

He looked into it a few years later. He hadn’t known what actually happened to them after he left, after he was found and he was given a chance to work for his own money instead of selling drugs on the streets. Darian overdosed a few months after, and his brother Mason was charged for having drugs on him, including a fire arm, after that they managed to find a lead that Mason and Darian were in the house where the third had overdosed in. Apparently his body had stayed on that couch for additional few days until he was found. The fourth was never brought up.

“Gavin,” Nines says, sitting closer.

Gavin peers up at him before leaning forward and kissed Nines. He hated the dreams, the memory, what he had done in the past, but it had brought him to the present, to this...to Nines.

“I love you,” he murmured before kissing Nines again and again.

Nines chuckled, pulling away, and taking Gavin’s hand, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “I love you too.”

“Stay with me…” Gavin says, moving over onto the bed.

“I don’t want to be anywhere else,” Nines said, lying down beside Gavin, and pulling the blankets over them. He let Gavin lie on his chest, an arm slung over him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Same old, same old.” He just wished one day these dreams would fade. At least he didn’t wake up alone, frightened of his own mind, before chugging coffee and forcing himself to keep his eyes open. “Just a reminder...that’s all.”

Nines lightly played with Gavin’s hair. “Do you think it’ll go away?”

Gavin closed his eyes, “One day.”

“I want you to know that you’re wanted, needed, and loved by the people around you, by your friends, and by me,” Nines said.

“I know…” Gavin whispered as sleep found him again, pulling him back to those cold streets, shivering, bloody, angry at everything, at himself. Then a car drove closer, and there was a man inside of it, and Gavin realized it was a cop.

“Are you alright?” the cop asked him.

Gavin shivered, then shook his head. “Not really.”

“My name is Jeffrey Fowler,” the man introduced, getting out of the car and walking towards him, but it seemed he was careful about it, as if he was getting close to a riled up dog, when in truth, it was simply hurt. “What’s your name?”

Gavin breathed deeply, then he flicked his gaze up at the man and said, “Gavin Reed.”

**Author's Note:**

> The scars Nines likes are the same ones he got from when he was beaten up in his past. Dude, there's so much going on in Detroit Evolution, I had to watch it a few times to find certain things that are incredibly well foreshadowed. The relationship is amazing. ANYWAY! Gavin's past was inspired by this fic, and I wanted to write something similar to the events of what happened. Like he said, he was a dumb kid.
> 
> Also, the dream and reality mesh together because it's still a real traumatic thing that happened to Gavin. At least in this fic, maybe DE!Gavin got over it after he started seeing the positive in his life, like Nines. :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Comments and/or Kudo's are appreciated.


End file.
